“It wasn’t the armadillo’s fault. Just a case of wrong place, wrong, well, you know,” she said. “We had to do it though. The way it just wandered in. Besides, we hadn’t eaten in days. We live like this sometimes. Why do you think the coyotes stopped eating all the dogs in the subdivision? Why do you think the cats can prowl the backyards in peace once again? Why do you think the deer have stopped stalking your petunias? We keep watch. You might not think it, living here, but it isn’t always easy getting to the supermarket. So, well, we just keep watch.”
Category Archives: Poetry
This Is Beyond
The persistent magnetism of limestone resolves a deep need for perspective. The muddy perch and thrust of egret wing and falling rock sweep and surrender. Each glittering shell explodes beyond the bluff. And see how the years have sustained us. Always trust that I will hold you bright as every shining blessing. If the bird could emerge from the Great River now, would it think to eat us all, or would it bask in wonder, stalk us in disbelief? We rest as even the storm refuses to cross the river to disturb us. We hold fast to the easy burning of these years to know we are more than one day, one season. We gather folded in tones and shadows unknown to us. A weathered pink. The tattered green. The softened gray. You are the lovely ones who saved me then, and save me still. We are carried to a peace beyond shadows and color. We let loose the secrets inside us. Our vast luminous love. This is how family is found, made, claimed. Once home, the hummingbird touches my ankle, knee, thigh. The blue meerkat stands still and tall to open the door to now, and to the still and silent sadness of the long letting go.
This Is Temporary
In all the silent sitting there is still and present peace. Yet soon the June bug pops against glass, until, upon release, it exerts a fleeting thrust, like a clumsy and foolish Icarus, flying towards the setting sun. Grass grows and speaks its grassness. Strands of bubbles blown from the bows of skeleton keys fatten, float, and burst like swollen exploding eyes. Swirls of wisteria and bindweed hint at beauty, encircling sunflower and honeysuckle in a tangle of summer. The flickering code of fireflies climbs the sky through branches above the backyard. The nights are cha-cha, rumba, bossa nova, and samba on the patio record player, and like the bright bricks of the back wall, colored only in chalk, fade in three quick months.
Gallery
This Is Outside
This gallery contains 9 photos.
Lock, lock, and unlock. Every door a danger. But beyond, a multitude of voices, an exactitude of each. I listen as they’re calling. Each voice in my own throat. Subtle clear collages blessed with ambiguity. The written note. The campfire. The seed planted. The curled chameleon tale. The dragon. The glistening turquoise egg of it all. […]
Distilling Thisness
Since you know a soul cannot be extracted or even quantified by anything like reason, or in these easy hours of starlight clothed with the hum of toads, you discard the charts and sentence stems and bask in the blooming sensuality of elemental radiance. You said, each thing is a thing that is never another thing, but always connected to every and all things. You are your own apparatus of embodied knowing and unknowing. This one and exact specificity. From the corner of your eye, or in what you tell yourself are dreams, the tiniest drops begin to fall. You decide to remember, or maybe imagine, it could be something like what you call real. More than an optical interference of liquid immiscibility. The astonishing essence. The everyday dispersion of color, light, ether, vapor, and heat.
Dear Suburbia 